The Case For Conspicuous Charity

Robert Wiblin believes "a culture of 'private altruism' (i.e. what Jesus taught us to do) has some seriously perverse effects":

Firstly, it means we are less inclined to talk about and share the information we have about which causes are most valuable and effective. Given that donations to charity and other approaches to making the world a better place vary in cost effectiveness across many orders of magnitude, this is a huge loss.

Secondly, if people can’t gain social acceptance from altruistic acts, those acts will tend to be crowded out by alternatives that are unavoidably conspicuous – impressive cars, holidays, degrees and so forth – that will do a better job of signalling how rich, noble and interesting they are.

On top of this, people will become biased towards conspicuous but ineffective ways of helping others. It’s easy to keep a (very valuable!) bank transfer secret, and pretty gauche to post the receipt on social media sites. But flying to Africa to help build a school, or signing up to a Facebook group? Everyone will find out about that! Sadly, signalling ‘arms races’ over conspicuous consumption and slacktivism, rather than ‘effective altruism’, are exactly what I observe around me.